Is there a possibility to inrease the maximum number or characters for an post to > 8000 ?

Question

I just wanted to extend the FAQ of PhysicsOverflow and stumbled upon the limited number of characters allowed for an answer (< 8000). This limit can not be increased from the Administrator Panel.

Could something be done about this in the future?

I personally know some people who like to write nice long physics answers too ...
In addition, this limit will probably be rather detrimental for the refereeing section.

Comments

We are speaking about the size of post (a question, an answer or a comment). In Q2A a post is stored in a table of the database with a structure given by the framework. Using the actual datatype, I could increase the size of the content to 20'000 on the running database. I'll check if it is possible to change this type. Then we should reach about 4 million characters. A post is coded in html. I wonder, would you really wont to read a text of 150 pages in one html page? I think navigation would be very complicated. Wouldn't it not be better to implement a pdf upload for this purpose?

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I see--- yes, the best way would be to link to a pdf hosted either here or on another site, for any text > 20k. You are right.

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On meta.Q2A: http://www.question2answer.org/qa/8870/how-to-change-max-8000-length-in-asking-questions     

Answer 1

This can been done only in the configuration file and additionally, the content column of qa_posts in the database has to bechanged to match. How much characters do you think are appropriate?

Comments

On SE, they use 30, 000...  

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Maybe we should ask @Ron about what is the longest answer/review he is planning to write in future ... ;-P

More seriously, maybe we can then start with 30 000 to and increase it if needed ...

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The maximum possible size is 20000. Ron will have to focus on the essentials ;-)

The size of the table qa_posts is limited to 65535. The other elements are given by Q2A. The size 20000 is set now. Maybe you will have to restart the session at the root to get the new configuration to be read.

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This is a serious issue--- why is the maximum possible size 20K? It's not about me, an academic contribution which is s serious sometimes runs 150 pages on arxiv, or about 150,000 characters, sometimes even more (like the recent Interuniversal Teichmuller Theory business). It is usually possible to split it up in a logical way, and cross-link, so a 20K limitation is not so severe as it looks at first, but really, why is there any limit at all? Text of essentially infinite length is usually smaller than any normal jpg or mpg.